The Guardian

It was raining so bad yesterday I decided not to go out and took some macro photo's. It was hammering down this morning with high winds and I feared I was just going to have to rough it as I wasn't going to do another macro! By this afternoon, it had eased and I decided to do some street photography. No sooner had I got in the car than I got a call out. There was a mix up between the pick up and drop off point, so after two trips to Pontypool, I decided to find something in that area.

Less than 15 minutes away in the mining town of Abertillery. It was an area I worked for a couple of years. I thought I'd have a look at 'Angel Of The Valleys' (The Guardian) statue.

Six Bells Colliery was a coalmine located in Six Bells, Abertilley  South Wales, in the United Kingdom. In 1960 it was the site of an underground explosion which killed 45 local miners. It is now the site of an artistically acclaimed memorial to those events

The colliery was originally opened as Arael Griffin on the site of an earlier balance shaft which had been sunk in 1863. On 9 February 1895 four men lost their lives during shaft sinking, when the boat in which they were riding capsized, and they fell to the shaft bottom

On 28 June 1960, at approximately 10:45, an explosion took place killing 45 men. It could have been far worse, but due to maintenance only 48 men were working instead of 125.

In the 1970s, Six Bells was integrated with Marine Colliery at Cwm. All coal after that point was raised through Marine. The whole complex was closed by British Coal in 1988.

The former colliery site has been landscaped and renamed Parc Arael Griffin. In 2010, a 66 ft high statue called the Guardian was erected near the site of the old colliery to commemorate the 1960 disaster.Designed by Sebastian Boyesen, it is fabricated with thousands of steel ribbons. The statue was unveiled by The Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams on 28 June 2010. Known as the Guardian, the statue has been described as "a Welsh answer to Antony Gormley's Angel of the North".